Hashimoto first used photography to further her ideas within a conceptual body of work that also incorporated sculpture, installation, and performance. On Becoming Tightly Bound, and Doll, for example, were exhibited as part of her decade-long environmental art project.
The earliest phases of the Junk Mail Experiment emphasized the environmental and personal burden of junk mail through large-scale installations, performance, and audience engagement. She also created a series of Junk Mail Weavings (from 2007) and the video, Junk Mail Confessions (2008), a collection of often humorous stories of exhibition goers’ thoughts on junk mail. The artist’s collaboration with environmental organizations offered a platform for the activists and opportunities for the community to engage.
Her first action towards the conclusion of this project was the performative installation Junk Mail Burning (2012). She set fire to half of her collected shreds in a two-evening event reminiscent of the Dondoyaki, the Ritual Burnings she experienced during her tenure in Japan. The ash from her burnings were incorporated into ceramic glazes and drawing media.
She recycled her junk mail shreds into 100’s of sheets of hand-made paper. And, led an art mail project with a group of students from the University of Illinois who formed and reworked 300 envelopes. These pieces were mailed to Berlin and incorporated into an installation shown during Berlin Artweek and Festival Berlin Neukoelln in 2016.
[1] ForestEthics.org; “EPA Junk Mail Reduction” Epa.gov. 2006-06-28.
IMAGES:
1. On Becoming Tightly Bound (2011) 10 x 13 inches
No. 5 in a seven-part photographic series in a seven-part photographic series following the transformation of a handful of shredded architectural plans manipulated and treated with various media.
2. Doll (2011) self portrait/performance in which the artist manipulates shredded junk mail with her body to form a mass measuring approximately 40 inches in diameter.
4. White Trash (2008) 5 x 16 x 6 feet, Japanese kimono chest with the shredded white paper a 14-person architecture firm discarded over a 4-week period.
photo: Shelley Anderson